UC-NRLF 


75 


GIFT  OF 


THE  CLASSIFICATION   OF  THE   ARTS 


BY  PROFESSOR  IKA  W.  HOWERTH 


OF  Tfft 

WNIWCRSiTY 

or 


[Keprinted  from  THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY,  Vol.  LXX,  May,  1907] 


[Reprinted  from  THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY,  May,  1907.] 


THE    CLASSIFICATION    OF   THE    ARTS 

BY  PROFESSOR  IRA  W.  HOWERTH 

THE  UNIVERSITY  OF  CHICAGO 

THE  conventional  classification  of  the  arts  into  useful,  mechanic 
or  industrial,  and  liberal,  polite  or  fine  is  unscientific.  It  will 
not  stand  before  even  a  superficial  examination.  Fine  and  useful  are 
by  no  means  mutually  exclusive  terms.  The  fine  arts  are  useful,  and 
the  useful  arts  should  be  fine.  The  art  that  paints  a  picture  or  chisels 
a  statue  satisfies  the  desire  for  beauty.  It  is,  therefore,  useful  for  the 
game  reason  that  cooking  or  farming  or  making  shoes  is  useful.  All 
that  the  word  useful  implies  is  satisfaction  of  desire,  and  this  is  the 
object  of  all  the  arts.  On  the  other  hand,  the  word  fine,  as  applied  to 
art,  does  not  signify  the  absence  of  utility,  but  merely  that  the  art  has 
been  brought  to  a  certain  degree  of  perfection  (polite-polished),  and 
that  its  practise  is  associated  with  gentility.  There  is  no  inherent 
reason  why  a  useful  art  may  not  become  a  fine  art.  Obviously,  then, 
the  division  of  the  arts  into  fine  and  useful  is  not  dichotomous.  One 
might  as  well  divide  the  sciences  into  practical  and  interesting. 

But  are  not  the  fine  arts  to  be  distinguished  from  the  useful  arts 
on  the  ground  that  the  former  involve  the  use  of  the  imagination  and 
the  realization  of  the  beautiful?  It  is  true,  of  course,  that  the  fine 
arts  are  par  excellence  the  imaginative  arts,  and  that  they  minister 
chiefly  to  the  esthetic  sense.  Still,  even  this  fact  does  not  distinguish 
them  wholly  from  the  useful  or  industrial  arts.  Intelligence,  imagina- 
tion and  pleasure  are  elements  to  be  found  in  all  the  arts.  Art  really 
implies  intelligence,  and  it  is  clear  that  imagination  and  pleasure  may 
enter  into  invention  as  well  as  into  the  so-called  creative  arts. 

What,  then,  is  the  basis  of  the  familiar  classification?  It  is  the 
relative  historical  circumstances  under  which  the  respective  arts  origi- 
nated and  have  been  developed.  The  useful,  mechanic  or  industrial 
arts  are  allied  to  productive  labor,  and  their  history  is  the  history  of 
labor;  while  the  liberal,  polite  or  fine  arts  have  always  been  associated 
with  leisure  and  culture. 

Now  productive  labor,  as  everybody  knows  who  is  in  the  least 
familiar  with  industrial  history,  was  originally  imposed  by  the  con- 
quering upon  the  conquered.  It  was  a  function  of  the  slave.  Hence 
to  labor  has  attached  the  odium  of  slavery.  A  life  of  productive  labor 
was,  in  the  earlier  history  of  mankind,  prima  facie  evidence  of  subjec- 
tion and  inferiority.  This  was  true  not  only  among  barbarians,  but 

263415 


43°  POPULAR   SCIENCE   MONTHLY 

also  among  the  peoples  most  highly  civilized.  In  Athens,  for  instance, 
all  work  was  assigned  to  slaves.  Among  the  nobility  in  Lacedemonia 
the  women  were  not  allowed  to  spin  or  weave  for  fear  of  degrading  their 
rank.  In  Rome  the  trades  were  called  the  dirty  arts  (sordidce  artes). 
Plato  and  Cicero  were  alike  in  regarding  the  useful  occupations  as 
degrading.  Even  the  '  chosen  people '  imagined  that  to  eat  one's  bread 
in  the  sweat  of  one's  face  is  one  of  the  severest  curses,  while  people  of 
modern  times  do  not  fully  realize  that  under  fair  conditions  it  is  a 
blessing,  and  that  under  almost  any  conditions  it  is  better  than  to  eat 
one's  bread  in  the  sweat  of  another's  face.  With  such  ideas  of  labor  it 
is  not  surprising  that  the  arts  identified  with  it,  or  associated  with  it  in 
thought,  should  be  put  in  a  class  by  themselves. 

On  the  other  hand,  leisure  being  originally,  as  it  is  now  in  some 
quarters,  a  badge  of  respectability,  the  arts  of  the  leisure  class  have 
naturally  partaken  of  this  distinction  and  been  regarded  as  superior  to 
the  useful  arts.  The  leisure  class  could  not  display  its  freedom  from 
toil  more  aptly  than  by  pursuing  arts  not  essential  to  physical  existence. 
Hence,  while  all  the  arts  were  originally  useful,  the  arts  to  which 
members  of  the  leisure  class  were  drawn  were  those  least  obviously  so. 
They  selected  those  arts  which  could  be  pursued  only  by  those  who 
could  command  their  own  time.  Hence,  painting,  sculpture,  music, 
poetry  and  the  like  were  properly  called  the  elegant,  that  is,  the  elected, 
arts,  and  they  soon  came  to  hold  the  same  relation  in  thought  to  the 
useful  arts  as  the  leisure  class  held  to  the  laboring  class. 

This,  then,  is  the  explanation  of  the  long-accepted  division  of  the 
arts  into  fine  and  useful:  the  monopolization  of  the  fine  arts  by  the 
leisure  class,  and  the  compulsory  practise  of  the  useful  arts  by  the  slave, 
the  serf  and  the  wage  laborer.  It  is  a  division  based  primarily  upon  a 
class  distinction.  The  fine  arts,  speaking  generally,  involve  a  greater 
play  of  the  imagination,  a  freer  expression  of  individuality,  more 
pleasure  than  the  useful  arts,  but  this  is  due  to  the  greater  leisure  and 
freedom  of  those  who  monopolized  them  as  well  as  to  the  nature  of  those 
arts  themselves.  If  laborers  in  the  industrial  arts  had  more  freedom, 
culture  and  leisure,  and  the  conditions  of  their  work  were  made  con- 
ducive to  pleasure,  these  arts  would  become  fine  arts ;  not  so  '  fine 9  as 
painting  and  sculpture,  perhaps,  but  fine  arts,  nevertheless.  'Work 
without  art/  said  Euskin,  and  by  this  I  suppose  he  meant  work  unac- 
companied by  pleasure,  cis  brutality/  But  work  ought  not  to  be 
divorced  from  art.  The  joy  and  beauty  now  associated  with  the  fine 
arts  must  become  elements  of  the  useful  arts  as  well.  "  Beauty  must 
come  back  to  the  useful  arts,"  said  Emerson,  "and  the  distinction 
between  the  fine  and  the  useful  arts  be  forgotten.  If  history  were  truly 
told,  if  life  were  nobly  spent,  it  would  no  longer  be  easy  or  possible  to 


THE   CLASSIFICATION   OF   THE   ARTS  43 r 

distinguish  the  one  from  the  other.  In  nature  all  is  useful,  all  is 
beautiful."1 

We  submit,  then,  that  the  commonly  accepted  classification  of  the 
arts  is  an  arbitrary  one.  Its  foundation,  the  supposedly  ignoble  char- 
acter of  productive  labor,  is  a  false  idea.  Labor,  not  leisure,  is  the  real 
badge  of  dignity.  '  The  stone  which  the  builders  refused  is  become 
the  headstone  of  the  corner/  Hence  the  old  classification  of  the  arts, 
a  classification  which  tends  to  disparage  labor,  is  an  anachronism,  and 
an  impertinence.  It  is,  in  a  way,  a  gratuitous  reflection  upon  the 
laboring  class. 

Before  proceeding  to  reclassify  the  arts,  let  us  carefully  define  the 
scope  of  art.  The  word  art  usually  suggests  the  fine  arts.  " c  Work 
of  art '  to  most  people,"  says  Huxley,  "  means  a  picture,  a  statue,  or  a 
piece  of  bijouterie;  by  way  of  compensation  ' artist'  has  included  in 
its  wide  embrace  cooks  and  ballet  girls,  no  less  than  painters  and  sculp- 
tors."2 The  word  art  properly  includes  '  all  the  works  of  man's  hands, 
from  a  flint  implement  to  a  cathedral  or  a  chronometer.'  It  embraces 
all  phenomena  in  which  intelligence  plays  the  part  of  conscious  and 
immediate  cause.  The  supplement  of  art  is  nature.  Art  includes 
everything  not  embraced  by  nature. 

The  field  of  the  arts  being  thus  defined,  we  may  now  construct  our 
classification. 

All  arts  are  alike  in  this — their  medium  is  matter.  No  art  can  free 
itself  wholly  from  material  things.  Some  arts,  as  music  and  poetry, 
may  seem  to  do  so,  for  the  ideal  elements  of  these  arts  predominate  to 
such  an  extent  that  we  forget  the  material  by  which  they  are  made 
manifest — writing  and  printing  materials,  musical  instruments  and 
sound  waves.  No  matter  how  idealistic  an  art  may  be,  it  must  still 
deal  with  matter. 

This  being  the  case,  a  logical  classification  of  the  arts  may  be  based 
upon  a  classification  of  material  phenomena.  And  if  this  latter  is  an 
evolutionary  classification,  that  is,  if  it  proceeds  from  the  simple  to  the 
complex,  the  resulting  classification  of  the  arts  will  be  in  the  order  of 
complexity  and  potential  utility.  It  will  also  be  a  classification  in 
which  each  art  will  be  a  means  to  those  above  it,  that  is,  a  classification 
of  superiority  and  subordination. 

Now  one  of  the  most  obvious  divisions  of  the  material  world  is  into 
the  inorganic,  the  organic  and  the  superorganic.  From  the  standpoint 
of  evolution  these  divisions  rank  in  the  order  named — the  organic  is 
higher  than  the  inorganic,  and  the  superorganic  higher  than  the  or- 
ganic. Each  division  furnishes  the  material  upon  which  is  exercised 

*'  Essays/  First  Series,  Essay  XII.,  Art. 

1 '  Evolution  and  Ethics,  and  Other  Essays/  authorized  edition,  New  York, 
1899,  p.  10,  foot-note. 


432  POPULAR   SCIENCE   MONTHLY 

a  special  class  of  arts.  There  are  arts  which,  deal  with  wood,  stone  and 
iron  (lifeless  elements),  arts  that  deal  with  living  things,  and  arts  that 
deal  with  organized  groups  of  men,  or  societies.  Hence  there  are  three 
grand  divisions  of  the  arts  corresponding  to  the  three  grand  divisions  of 
the  material  world.  Simplifying  our  terminology,  we  may  call  them 
the  physical  arts,  the  vital  arts  and  the  social  arts. 

The  physical  arts  are  relatively  the  lowest.  The  material  upon 
which  they  are  employed  is  passive.  It  e  stays  put/  The  principles 
underlying  these  arts  are  extremely  simple.  The  mechanical  prin- 
ciples, for  instance,  are  seven  in  number.  They  may  indeed  be  re- 
duced to  two — the  lever  and  the  inclined  plane.  Historically  probably, 
as  well  as  analytically,  the  art  of  making  and  using  tools  comes  first. 
The  primitive  man  who  chipped  his  arrow-head  from  a  piece  of  flint, 
and  fashioned  the  shaft  of  his  arrow  from  a  stick  of  wood,  employed 
art.  He  was  an  artist.  If  in  the  practise  of  his  art  he  manifested  no 
sense  of  beauty,  it  was  due  to  the  pressing  demands  of  the  more 
imperative  desires  rather  than  to  the  absence  of  the  esthetic  sense. 
What  birds  and  beasts,  and  even  insects,  possess  must  have  been  present 
in  the  lowest  of  men.  Archeology  shows  that  even  the  cave-dweller 
tried  his  hand  occasionally  at  the  purely  decorative  arts.  But  the  first 
arts  were  the  hand  arts — manufacture,  in  the  strict  sense  of  that  word. 

As  intelligence  increased,  and  inventive  genius  was  applied,  hand- 
making  grew  into  machine-making.  The  machine  is  a  combination  of 
tools  in  the  operation  of  which  a  natural  force,  like  wind,  water,  steam 
or  electricity,  is  usually  employed.  The  machine  arts  are  more  com- 
plex than  the  hand  arts.  Their  social  potentiality  is  greater.  Their 
object,  like  that  of  the  hand  arts,  is  not  necessarily  the  production  of 
articles  of  vulgar  utility  only.  It  may  be  idealistic  in  the  highest 
degree.  The  various  fine  arts  must  fall  under  one  division  or  the  other. 
Hand-making  (manufacture)  and  machine-making  (machino-facture) 
completely  cover  the  realm  of  the  physical  arts.  Under  the  first  are 
the  manual  occupations  (handicrafts),  and  under  the  second  the 
mechanical  occupations,  imperfectly  designated  'the  trades/ 

Now,  the  physical  arts  that  minister  to  the  vulgar  wants,  or  needs, 
of  mankind  have  reached  a  high  degree  of  perfection.  They  are  to-day 
the  theater  for  the  display  of  the  highest  reaches  of  inventive  genius. 
A  watch,  a  locomotive,  a  printing-press,  are  marvels  of  ingenuity.  We 
do  not  wonder  that  untutored  men  have  worshiped  a  watch  as  a  su- 
perior being.  A  printing-press,  working  automatically,  will  print,  fold 
and  deliver  twelve  thousand  twenty-four-page  papers  in  an  hour. 
Machines  in  almost  every  industry  turn  out  articles  which  in  quantity, 
regularity  and  delicacy  of  form  could  not  possibly  be  produced  by  hand. 
But  the  object  of  these  arts  has  been  quantity  rather  than  quality, 
mercantile  utility  rather  than  beauty.  Salability  has  been  their  main 


THE   CLASSIFICATION   OF   THE  ARTS  433 

consideration.  They  have  been  the  instruments  of  trade  and  gain, 
rather  than  the  ministers  of  joy  and  life.  They  have  thus  been  de- 
graded. They  are  the  Cinderella  of  the  household  of  art.  None  the 
less  they  are  noble;  and  when  clothed  in  beauty,  as  some  day,  let  us 
hope,  they  will  be,  they  will  win  their  full  share  of  admiration  and 
devotion.  The  repulsion  which  some  profess  to  feel  toward  the  machine 
arts  is  based  upon  a  misconception.  It  is  not  these  arts  which  should 
excite  disdain:  it  is  the  purpose  for  which  they  are  employed  and  the 
conditions  under  which  they  are  practised.  They  could  free  men  from 
drudgery  if  properly  used;  they  outrank  the  genii  of  fable  in  serving 
their  master ;  and  they  are  not  in  themselves  incompatible  with  pleasure 
and  beauty.  But  as  industrial  conditions  are  to-day,  men  are  not  the 
masters  of  the  machine.  They  are  enslaved  by  it.  Machinery  has 
more  slaves  than  any  dominant  class  ever  possessed.  Thus  it  has  been, 
and  thus  it  will  be  as  long  as  men  are  (  an  appendage  to  profit-grind- 
ing/ Once  free  men  from  the  machine,  give  them  leisure  and  culture, 
and  the  machine  arts  will  become  fine  arts.  Under  normal  conditions 
the  element  of  the  beautiful  would  manifest  itself  in  all  work,  mechan- 
ical or  manual,  because  man  is  a  beauty-loving  animal. 

It  appears,  then,  that  the  arts  now  known  as  the  fine  arts  must,  in 
our  present  classification,  be  distributed  among  the  handicrafts  and 
the  mechanical  occupations,  since  they  have  been  selected  out  because 
of  their  idealistic  character.  They  are  physical  arts,  because,  like  all 
such  arts,  they  realize  the  ideal  by  the  exercise  of  manual  or  mechanical 
operations  upon  brute  matter.  The  artist  who  paints  a  picture  em- 
ploys pigment  and  canvas  and  brush.  To  be  sure  he  is  supposed  to 
'  mix  his  paint  with  brains/  but  there  is  nothing  essentially  unique  in 
this.  Mortar  should  be  so  mixed — and  dough.  The  sculptor  uses  stone 
and  a  chisel.  The  mechanical  part  of  his  work  is  turned  over  to  the 
machine,  from  which  he  himself  is  free.  His  art  differs  in  no  inherent 
and  absolute  respect  from  that  of  the  industrial  artist.  Carving  a 
statue  to  please  the  eye  ought  not  to  differentiate  the  ( artist '  from  the 
laborer  who  carves  a  chair  to  relieve  us  of  '  that  tired  feeling.'  If  the 
one  act  is  accompanied  by  pleasure,  and  a  manifestation  of  the  beauti- 
ful, while  the  other  is  not,  it  is  due  to  factitious  circumstances. 

It  is  not  to  be  denied,  of  course,  that  the  fine  arts  are  the  most  highly 
cultivated  of  all  the  arts.  Their  possibilities  have,  perhaps,  been  more 
completely  realized  than  those  of  the  other  arts.  Certainly  this  is  true 
with  respect  to  the  vital  and  the  social  arts.  They  have  drawn  to  them- 
selves much  of  the  talent  freed  from  the  grosser  forms  of  labor.  They 
have  touched  the  highest  levels  of  skill  in  execution,  and  of  idealistic 
conception.  Zeuxis,  it  is  said,  imitated  nature  so  successfully  that  the 
birds  pecked  at  his  painted  grapes,  while  Parrhasius,  his  Athenian 
rival,  deceived  with  his  pictured  curtain  even  the  practised  eye  of 

VOL.    LXX.— 28 


434  POPULAR   SCIENCE   MONTHLY 

Zeuxis  himself.  Every  museum  des  beaux  artes  evidences  lofty  flights 
in  the  realm  of  the  ideal.  Some  profess  to  believe  that  the  climax  of 
art  has  been  reached,  that  Grecian  art  will  never  be  surpassed.  This  is 
a  gratuitous  assumption.  The  soil  of  art  is  freedom,  leisure  and  cul- 
ture; its  light  and  warmth  and  moisture,  appreciation.  If  men  were 
freed  from  grinding  toil,  if  the  industrial  arts  had  become  fine  arts, 
and  art  appreciation  were  a  common  heritage,  the  growth  of  even  the 
more  imaginative  arts  would  receive  an  impetus  hitherto  unfelt,  and 
achieve  a  development  as  yet  unrealized. 

We  have  now  analyzed  the  physical  arts,  the  arts  which  deal  with 
non-living  matter.  They  are  divided  into  manufacture,  which  em- 
braces the  handicrafts,  and  machinof acture,  which  includes  the  mechan- 
ical occupations.  There  is  no  need  of  a  third  class  to  embrace  the  fine 
arts,  since  these  are  at  bottom  manual  or  mechanical,  and  their  fineness 
is  due  to  the  circumstances  under  which  they  have  been  cultivated. 
Ideally  all  arts  are  fine.  We  now  pass  to  the  vital  arts. 

The  world  of  life  is  divided  into  plants  and  animals.  The  arts 
corresponding  to  these  two  divisions  are  the  botanical  and  the  zoological. 
The  botanical  arts  realize  the  ideal  in  plant  life;  the  zoological,  in 
animal  life.  To  the  former  belong  agriculture,  horticulture,  and  the 
like,  and  to  the  latter  the  domestication,  breeding  and  training  of  ani- 
mals, and  the  education  of  man.  It  might  be  more  complimentary 
and  gratifying  to  the  human  animal  if  the  arts  pertaining  to  his  devel- 
opment were  given  a  class  by  themselves.  This  may  be  done,  if  it  is 
insisted  upon.  They  would  be  called,  of  course,  the  anthropological 
arts. 

Now,  the  vital  arts,  dealing  as  they  do  with  a  higher  because  more 
complex  form  of  matter,  are  superior  to  the  physical  arts.  It  will  seem 
strange  and  illogical  at  first  thought  to  find  farming  ranked  above 
music,  .and  gardening  above  painting.  And  there  is,  of  course,  an  ele- 
ment of  absurdity  in  it  if  we  think  of  the  botanical  arts  as  they  are 
usually  practised.  They  are  empirical.  Their  possibilities  of  use  and 
beauty  have  only  begun  to  be  appreciated.  They  bear  about  the  same 
relation  to  what  they  might  be,  as.a  chant  of  the  Igorrotes  does  to  a 
Wagnerian  opera.  There  is  not  a  nation  on  the  globe  that  has  given, 
or  is  now  giving,  as  much  scientific  attention  to  farming  as  to  fighting. 
Hence  the  farmer  is  still  a  '  hayseed/  and  the  fighter  a  tailor's  model. 
But  if  we  think  of  these  arts  as  they  might  become — as  sustaining  a 
populous  world  and  clothing  it  with  new  forms  of  life  and  beauty — 
our  estimate  will  change.  If,  as  we  read,  Mr.  Burbank  has  developed 
new  species  of  flowers  and  fruit,  and  has  produced  a  spineless  cactus 
which  is  to  be  the  means  of  reclaiming  the  arid  regions  of  the  west,  he 
has  revealed  some  of  the  possibilities  of  the  botanical  arts,  and  done 
much  to  remove  the  stigma  that  has  attached  to  the  cultivation  of  the 


THE   CLASSIFICATION    OF   THE   ARTS  435 

soil.  Breeders  and  fanciers  are  showing  what  can  be  done  to  mold 
animal  life  into  preconceived  forms.  They  "  habitually  speak  of  an 
animal's  organization,"  says  Darwin,  "  as  something  plastic,  which  they 
can  model  almost  as  they  please."  "  It  would  seem,"  said  Lord  Somer- 
ville,  "  as  if  they  had  chalked  out  upon  a  wall  a  form  perfect  in  itself, 
and  then  had  given  it  existence."3  Is  it  less  difficult  to  fashion  the 
ideal  in  flesh  than  in  clay  ?  The  fine  arts  have  been  called  the  '  creative 
arts/  But  the  botanical  and  zoological  arts,  which  are  capable  of 
bringing  into  existence  new  forms  of  life,  ideal  forms,  differing  in  size, 
shape,  color  and  character  from  anything  that  nature  has  produced,  are 
also  creative  arts.  They  continue  and  supplement  the  work  of  the 
Creator.  There  seems  no  absurdity,  then,  in  ranking  above  the  art 
that  paints  a  flower  the  art  that  can  produce  one;  above  the  art  that 
beguiled  the  birds,  the  art  that  can  change  the  leopard's  spots. 

At  the  head  of  the  vital  arts  is  the  art  which  seeks  to  realize  the 
ideal  in  the  life  and  character  of  individual  men.  Man  is  an  animal,  a 
paragon,  if  you  please,  and  the  '  beauty  of  the  world/  but  still  an 
animal.  The  arts  devoted  to  his  physical,  mental  and  moral  improve- 
ment are,  strictly  speaking,  zoological.  They  are  the  highest  of  the 
vital  arts  because  they  deal  with  the  highest  form  of  life,  and  outrank 
all  below  them  in  possibilities.  The  ideal  man  realized  in  the  flesh, 
which  is  the  object  of  these  arts,  would  exceed  in  beauty  and  beneficent 
influence  anything  that  is  possible  to  the  painter's  brush  or  the  sculptor's 
chisel.  The  totality  of  these  arts  may  be  embraced  by  the  word 
education. 

Education  employs  all  lower  arts  as  means.  It  rests  upon  them  and 
requires  a  knowledge  of  their  principles.  To  educate  demands  the 
highest  type  of  mind.  It  is  an  art  which  the  world  has  never  prop- 
erly estimated  or  appreciated.  When  ranked  as  an  art  at  all  it  has  been 
placed  below  the  fine  arts,  whereas,  when  made  a  fine  art  itself,  it  is 
immeasurably  above  them.  To  be  sure,  there  are  few  who  have  made 
it  such.  The  great  educational  artists  may  be  counted  on  one's  fingers. 
Each  of  these  men  has  been  as  one  born  out  of  time.  But  when  the 
art  of  education  is  duly  appreciated  the  world  will  find  a  place  in  its 
Temple  of  Fame  for  such  artists  as  Pestalozzi  and  Froebel,  Herbart 
and  Horace  Mann,  and  the  other  great  teachers  who  have  striven  to 
make  the  word  flesh  that  it  might  dwell  among  men.  Education 
should  always  be,  and  should  always  have  been,  a  fine  art. 

We  now  come  to  the  third  and  last  division  of  the  arts,  the  social 
arts.  The  ultimate  end  of  all  the  arts  is  a  perfected  humanity.  Hence, 
in  one  sense,  all  the  arts  are  social  arts.  Here,  however,  we  include  only 
the  arts  which  have  for  their  immediate  end  the  improvement  of  society, 
which  deal  with  society  as  the  next  lower  arts  deal  with  the  individ- 

» See  Darwin,  '  Origin  of  Species/  Chap.  I. 


\ 


436  POPULAR   SCIENCE   MONTHLY 

ual — man,  lower  animal  or  plant.  The  social  arts  are  in  reality  one  art. 
They  are  the  art  of  employing  all  other  arts  in  the  realization  of  an 
ideal  social  conception.  This  art  might  also  be  called  education,  since 
we  speak  of  the  education  of  the  race  as  well  as  the  education  of  the 
individual.  It  might  be  called  government,  if  that  word  were  not 
vitiated  by  its  associations.  Professor  Lester  F.  Ward  employs  the 
word  sociocracy.  "  This  general  social  art/'  he  says,  "  the  scientific 
control  of  the  social  forces  by  the  collective  mind  of  society  for  its 
advantage,  in  strict  homology  with  the  practical  arts  of  the  industrial 
world,  is  what  I  have  hitherto  given  the  name  Sociocracy."4  Call  it 
what  we  may,  this  social  art  is  the  highest  of  all  the  arts.  Its  end  is 
a  perfected  humanity.  In  realizing  this  end  it  utilizes  all  other  arts. 
It  is  the  art  of  arts.  Its  application  requires  the  maximum  of  intelli- 
gence and  skill.  Its  potentialities  are  as  yet  undreamed  of. 

The  main  divisions  and  subdivisions  of  the  arts  having  now  been 
passed  briefly  in  review,  it  will  be  helpful  to  bring  them  together  in 
tabular  form.  They  will  stand  as  follows: 

l    Ph     "     1     /  Manufacture         /  Handicrafts. 

\  Machinofacture    \  Mechanical  occupations. 

Art  ,    ,    m  {  etc. 

1    ~    i     •     i  f  Domestication,  breeding  and  training. 

I  Zool°gical  {  Education. 
3.  Social       '  •{   Sociocracy. 

'  Outlines  of  Sociology/  New  York,  1898,  p.  292. 


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